Category Archives: Culture

What is wrong with our society, y’all? How is Chris Brown back on top? Sunday night while watching the Grammy’s, I expressed to the hubs that I hated that Chris Brown was performing at the Grammy’s. Why?! Why did his album debut at number 1? Why do people love him still? I LOVED him about 5 years ago. Loved. That all changed that night before the Grammy’s that he beat Rihanna up. I’m sure she’d like any attention to that night to go away and for people to forget that it happened, but I can’t. I won’t. I cannot stand for people to support a woman beater. Not only support, but idolize. Just look at these reactions from Twitter to CB at the Grammy’s. They make me ill.

Friday night I spent the evening with two girlfriends and had a night you could only experience in New York. We hopped in a cab and headed to the Ukranian Institute after work where we went to watch the St. John fashion show.

We ended up sitting front row and I was 3 people away from Gloria Estefan, who was incredibly nice, incredibly gracious and incredibly tiny.

The show was fantastic. There were these amazing red pants that I wanted, along with a brown sequined pencil skirt. I would wear them every day…or every other day.

On the way out we caught sight of Kate Winslet who is apparently the face of their line. She was wearing red tights – my favorite.

After the show, we headed over to the Carlyle where we grabbed a table at the bar, got a round of drinks and caught up over the jazz of the bar piano player. The woman sitting at the table next to us happened to be an opera singer. She joined in to sing a few of the songs. So amazing.

Seriously, where else can someone have a night like this. So iconic!

Oh, and yesterday at brunch with my girlfriends, I was checking out this girl’s amazing pants. She turned around and it was Eva Pickford. Only during fashion week.

Last Monday, while A was visiting, I took the day off and, among other things, we went to the Tim Burton exhibit at the MOMA. I was pretty indifferent about it, but thought she might like it, so I suggested it. She was excited and we went. I ended up liking it much, much more than I expected I would. I could have spent so much time in there looking at the observations he makes of the world in drawings – very similar to somet of the things in my “idea journal” from portfolio school. It was also really interesting to see artifacts from some of his movies, although, I was disappointed that there was nothing from Alice in Wonderland of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. All in all, I really enjoyed the exhibit. I wonder if Tim Burton has kept all those things and they were on loan from him, or if movie studios and collectors own the things on display.

Last night tbf and I watched The Cove, which I believe won the best documentary Oscar. It was literally the most disturbing thing I’ve ever seen. I was shocked and disgusted that people (anywhere) would be capable of something so horrifying. In no way have I ever considered myself an animal rights activist – quite the opposite, really, but what they do is just SO wrong. These people in Taiji, Japan literally herd dolphins into a cove while they’re migrating by putting metal poles into the water and beating on them to mess up the dolphin’s sonar/communication and drive them into a panic. Once the dolphins are netted in, these trainers come in and pick the ones they want for sea world or wherever (I will never, ever go to Sea World, btw), then these men murder all the others – including all the babies. You can tell that the dolphins can anticipate what is going to happen and that they’re literally panicked.

The team who made this documentary hid cameras in the hills around the cove where the killing takes place and got HD video of the slaughtering. The water turns blood red; the dolphins swim and flail around trying to escape. You can see that they’re in pain and they don’t die quickly. It’s so painful and appalling to watch.

The thing is, you can’t even eat dolphin, it will give you mercury poisoning, but they pass it off as whale and are able to sell it. This documentary was one of the most painful things I’ve ever watched. And one of the saddest parts is the activist who wanted to make this film is the man who captured the 5 dolphins used for Flipper, which is what essentially started this whole dolphin frenzy around the world. He said he’s spent the better part of his life trying to undo what he started. It’s incredibly sad.

Now that I’ve seen this, I’m sad and disgusted and just feel helpless. What in the world can I do to stop these terrible people killing tens of thousands of dolphins in Japan?? They clearly know it’s wrong, they tried and tried throughout the documentary to keep anyone from filming anything – all the video they obtained was through secret cameras and life risks. It’s incredible and what’s even more incredible is that this won’t be stopped because it’s a worldwide political matter. So so so unnerving.

Definitely watch The Cove if you haven’t seen it, but be ready to become completely unsettled.

This video is so cool. I meant to post it a while back, but am just now getting around to it. Watching it gave me chills. So cool that they could get such a huge crowd of people all to do this dance. They all had to be there the day before for rehearsals. My favorite part is an areal shot of the crowd splitting down the middle and moving back together.

Friday night we walked to a new bar in Long Island City, Dutch Kills. It was probably about a mile from our apt and a bit of a walk, but it was definitely nice out and I was in flat sandals. It was a bar my roommate had heard about and wanted to go to. I was a little apprehensive and from the name of it I was imagining black, skulls and tattoo style roses.

As we were walking up, my other roommate’s sister, who is in town visiting, said, “Are we going to that place with the sign flashing ‘BAR’ outside?” We could only really say, I think so..

I was very pleasantly surprised when we walked in. The door was just a solid, dark metal door and seemed a bit sketchy. Inside, however, it is a long, narrow place with dark wood on the walls and ceiling. The first half of the establishment is table that fit 4-6 and 2. Past that is the area where the bar is located and beyond that is a small area with a couch or 2 and a piano. The floor in this area was painted dark and sprinkled with saw dust. This is where the live jazz band hung out. On the bar was a ton of fresh fruit stacked in bowls. Behind the bar was a huge block of ice that it looks like they cut from to put in drinks, high end liquors, chalk boards listing the drinks of the season (they change as the fruits that are in season do). Guiseppe Gonzalez took our order, diligently made our drinks, paying attention to every detail, lined them on the bar, and explained each, complete with the story of their origins before doling them out. The whole place had a very 1920s feel to me. I would definitely go back.

In the ’90s people said “dude” and “like.” In the early ’00s, people said “your mom.” In business presentations people said, “um.” People are now replacing those words with “honestly,” “I mean…” “I feel like,” and “Yeah, no…” or “No, yeah…”
These new words or phrases have really inundated the vocabulary of almost every person I know. I hear them all the time and it’s almost completely unnecessary to attach any of these to the beginning of a sentence. They seem like a very passive way to disagree or even agree to me. They’re a cover up for what a person is really trying to say, but doesn’t want to come out with because they don’t want to appear confrontational. I guess it really just bothers me that people aren’t comfortable saying what they mean and if they’re not comfortable there are 2 things that need to be considered…maybe they shouldn’t be saying it at all, or maybe we have become far too sensitive as a culture.